I covered the Banff World Television Festival last month because I'm interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of TV. I'm interested from the perspective of a kid who likes to take my toys apart to see how they work and I write about it from the viewpoint of a fan.

Even more than writing about the industry itself, I'd enjoy writing about the new homegrown show I'm enjoying — that is, if I knew about such a show in the first place; and enjoyed it in the second place. Those two events so rarely coincide, Halley's comet looks like a pest.

I've written before about the invisible networks, about realizing how little Canadian programming I stumble across, how difficult it is to even seek it out, and lamenting the fact that the poor Canadian industry can't compete against the giant American TV marketing machine.

But now that I'm motivated to at least be aware of what's out there in Canadian television so that I'm not overlooking programs I might enjoy and programs that might reflect stories I wouldn't otherwise see, I find that Canadian television does not seem to see me as its future.

At the Banff festival, I attended a town hall session on the future of Canadian TV with representatives from funders, regulators, content producers, and broadcasters, talking to an audience of the same. Now I think I understand another layer of the invisible networks problem. Listening to executives talk about my own country's product, I felt completely invisible. The discussion was focused on everything but the Canadian television viewer.

I'm not necessarily the typical viewer. At this point, I'm probably more motivated than average to seek out Canadian programming. Unfortunately, the reason for my recent motivation is not a reproducible marketing strategy: I got addicted to the blog of a Canadian television writer who's insightful, passionate, and funny about a wide range of subjects, but particularly the industry he works in. And he kept talking about shows I'd never heard of, like Jeff Ltd., Billable Hours and The Jane Show.

I started to be conscious of the fact that all these Canadian shows were appearing without a blip on my radar and wondered why. Was I just not paying attention? Or was the industry not paying attention to me?

That writer, Denis McGrath, ended up using me as a case study of how the industry is not reaching viewers (TV Mandarins Meet the Viewer: Part One and Part Two), and his questions probed the ways the industry has failed to connect to me in the present. On top of the discussions at Banff, I'm starting to feel the industry isn't particularly interested in connecting to me in the future, either.

Listening to executives fretting about international markets felt a little insulting. What about me? Wouldn't they like to make a TV show I might want to watch and then let me know about it so I can watch it? I heard "let's protect Canadian content in the scary new world of the unregulated Internet, but let's not make it too Canadian or we can't sell it."